Amnesty International has criticised Australia's policy against asylum seekers at a regional conference on people-smuggling in the Indonesian island of Bali.
Australia runs detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea but Amnesty International says Australia's approach threatens the principle of international solidarity on which international refugee protection depends.
Amnesty says states are duty bound under international law to protect those seeking asylum irrespective of whether people have been smuggled or made their own way to a country to seek asylum.
Amnesty says the Australian policy of operating off-shore centres creates two classes of asylum states.
They are the rich and the powerful states that select whom they will accept as refugees, and the rest who are compelled to host large numbers, including people returned from the rich countries.
